Site Visits

Located in Lincoln Park, Victory Gardens Theater produces some of the city’s best contemporary theater works. Victory Gardens is focused on creating accessible theater — both by creating an inclusive artistic community and in partnering with Chicago Public Schools in order to spread culture and art among the city’s youth. Victory Gardens’ shows express this very mission by reflecting the diversity of the Chicago and of the United States. Last up in Victory Gardens’ season was the show Roz and Ray, which explored the intersections between the AIDS epidemic and hemophilia in 1980’s America. Through relevant theater and by connecting with Chicago’s students, Victory Gardens’ Theater creates socially relevant art while assuring that the human right to an education includes art and culture. Delegates will have a chance to hear about past performances, have a Q&A with the stage panel, and sit in on a public programming meeting.

A main initiative of the Lupe Fiasco Foundation, MURAL works with at-risk communities in Chicago through education surrounding food justice, empowerment funding, and the implementation of the hip-hop scholars program. Focused primarily upon the city’s youth, MURAL works to empower Chicago’s young people through art, helping equip them with the knowledge and the tools by which to enact positive change in their communities. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn more about the hip-hop scholars program, which works to bring hip-hop music into the education standards of the state of Illinois.

The Art AIDS America exhibit is concluding its national tour in Lincoln Park, Chicago after opening on World AIDS Day on December 1st. The exhibit explores the diversity of artistic responses to the AIDS epidemic that defined the American zeitgeist during the 1980s and continues to affect the world today. HIV has an important presence in American art — a disease that took thousands of lives, and brought to light issues of injustice facing the LGBTQ community. The exhibit is created around the themes of beauty, sex, loss, courage, and politics, underlying the Conference’s themes of both power and protest in human rights. Delegates will have a guided tour through the exhibit, followed by an opportunity to record their own stories or reactions through the StoryCorps app.

Project& collaborates with artists to create new models of cultural participation with social impact, and their most recent initiative Working in America asks its audience to deeply engage with humanization through storytelling. The exhibit explores stories of how we locate ourselves in society, how we are seen or made invisible, and how we find meaning through the work we do. Raw and authentic narratives paint a profoundly rich portrait of what work looks, means, and feels like in the U.S. This Humans of New York style approach to the concept of what it means to be working holds particular pertinence in wake of the most recent Presidential election. After a curatorial tour, delegates will participate in the interactive component of the exhibit by taking pictures and sharing their working stories.

ART WORKS uses design and the arts to raise awareness of and educate the public about significant human rights issues. Their visual advocacy tools produce action on human rights crises at the grassroots, media, and policy levels. Projects range from post-conflict resolution visibility to gender/children’s rights to refugee displacement, all aiming to create dialogue and spark action. Where others might, ART WORKS does not shy away from selecting the topics which are the most intractable, the least covered in the mainstream media, and the most abusive for victims. Delegates will have the opportunity to learn about several exhibitions through a slideshow, will dissect and analyse related photography and film, and will then participate in a roundtable discussion about how young people can harness art’s ability to mobilize, excite, and provoke.

Albany Park Theater Project devises original plays that tell real-life stories with honesty, imagination, intelligence, and love, inspiring audiences to feel more alive. Since 1997, their youth ensemble has premiered 19 plays, performed for more than 50,000 people, and opened Albany Park’s first performing arts space. On stage, APTP challenges inequality and racism by asking people to bear witness to stories that might otherwise get overlooked or misrepresented. Their performances humanize complex issues like immigration, foreclosure, poverty, abuse, hunger. Delegates who visit APTP can expect a tour of the space and viewing of historic footage throughout the project’s existence. They will participate in theater games and activities that ATPTs ensemble uses to unlock the core of their mission on stage. To conclude, delegates will embark on an exploration of the Albany Park neighborhood, visiting stores and hearing about the community’s development historically.